Cleo Fields

Cleo Fields (22 November 1962-) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D) from Louisiana's 4th congressional district from 3 January 1993 to 3 January 1997, interrupting Jim McCrery's two terms in office.

Biography
Cleo Fields was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1962, the seventh of ten children born in a lower-class African-American family. He worked at a store and a McDonald's restaurant to support his family, and the ambitious Fields gained a bachelor's degree and a law degree from Southern University. In 1986, at the age of 24, he was elected to the State Senate, becoming the youngest state legislator in the state. In 1993, he was elected to the US House of Representatives as the congressman from the 4th district, and he pushed forwards a liberal agenda. Fields was given a perfect rating by several women's rights, public health groups, and labor movements, while many conservative organizations gave him 0 percentage ratings. He fought for redistricting to end racial gerrymandering, and he became a very popular man in the US Congress, with his colleagues cheering for him when his son was born in 1995. That same year, he ran for Governor of Louisiana, but he lost in a landslide to Republican Party challenger Mike Foster, and he decided not to run for re-election as Governor. In 1997, he achieved considerable notoriety when he was filmed receiving a bribe of $20,000 (in cash) from former governor Edwin Edwards, saying that it was an innocent transaction with a humorous reason; Fields later said that, as he was no longer an elected official, he was not obliged to tell people why he received the money. From January 1998 to January 2008, he served in the State Senate from the 14th district, succeeding John Guidry and preceding Yvonne Dorsey-Colomb. Fields famously said, "Rosa Parks sat so that we could stand up. Martin Luther King marched so Jesse Jackson could run. Jesse Jackson ran so that Obama could win," in 2008 after Obama won the presidential election, praising the progress of the Civil Rights movement.